A Scalable VCSEL-Array Optical Wireless Transmitter With Experimental Multi-Beam Prototype

Yi Liu; Wajahat Ali; Rui Chen; Nikolaos Bamiedakis; Ian H. White; Harald Haas; Michael Crisp; Richard V. Penty

doi:10.1109/JLT.2025.3617131

A Scalable VCSEL-Array Optical Wireless Transmitter With Experimental Multi-Beam Prototype

Yi Liu, Wajahat Ali, Rui Chen, Nikolaos Bamiedakis, Ian H. White, Harald Haas, Michael Crisp, Richard V. Penty

Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering

University of Cambridge

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

A 5×5 VCSEL array-based optical wireless communication multi-beam transmitter is designed and simulated. Each element of the array addresses a separate spatial attocell. A microlens-array based homogenizer achieves uniform coverage at the receiver plane from each multi-mode VCSEL output. 1 m² total coverage is achieved with each attocell covering an area of 400 cm² at a range of 3 m. For a proof-of-concept demonstration a 1×3 channel VCSEL array-based transmitter prototype is experimentally tested. The performance is verified by demonstrating three channels achieving ∼ 0.12 mW/m² uniform power with negligible optical interference to adjacent attocells (<-14 dB). With a simple receiver design using low cost, off-the-shelf components, each channel of the transmitter achieves ∼10 Gb/s throughput using OFDM within 7 cm lateral range and > 4 Gb/s within 12 cm lateral range at 3 m. The transmitter meets eye-safety restrictions and could be scaled to 250 Gb/s aggregate data rate by employing all 25 VCSELs with independent OFDM modulation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	10591-10597
Number of pages	7
Journal	Journal of Lightwave Technology
Volume	43
Issue number	23
Early online date	2 Oct 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JLT.2025.3617131
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2025

Funding

Received 21 May 2025; revised 3 September 2025; accepted 23 September 2025. Date of publication 2 October 2025; date of current version 2 December 2025. This work was supported in part by U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/S016570/1, Grant EP/Y037243/1, and Grant EP/X040569/1. (Corresponding author: Yi Liu.) Yi Liu and Harald Haas are with the LiFi Research and Development Centre, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, CB2 1TN Cambridge, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]).

Funders	Funder number
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council	EP/S016570/1, EP/X040569/1, EP/Y037243/1

Keywords

Free-space optical communication
optical communication equipment
optical transmitters
verticalcavity surface-emitting lasers
wireless communication

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Access to Document

10.1109/JLT.2025.3617131

https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/a2d856a5-7010-4fca-9501-ae1492d7f058Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "A Scalable VCSEL-Array Optical Wireless Transmitter With Experimental Multi-Beam Prototype",

abstract = "A 5×5 VCSEL array-based optical wireless communication multi-beam transmitter is designed and simulated. Each element of the array addresses a separate spatial attocell. A microlens-array based homogenizer achieves uniform coverage at the receiver plane from each multi-mode VCSEL output. 1 m2 total coverage is achieved with each attocell covering an area of 400 cm2 at a range of 3 m. For a proof-of-concept demonstration a 1×3 channel VCSEL array-based transmitter prototype is experimentally tested. The performance is verified by demonstrating three channels achieving ∼ 0.12 mW/m2 uniform power with negligible optical interference to adjacent attocells (<-14 dB). With a simple receiver design using low cost, off-the-shelf components, each channel of the transmitter achieves ∼10 Gb/s throughput using OFDM within 7 cm lateral range and > 4 Gb/s within 12 cm lateral range at 3 m. The transmitter meets eye-safety restrictions and could be scaled to 250 Gb/s aggregate data rate by employing all 25 VCSELs with independent OFDM modulation.",

keywords = "Free-space optical communication, optical communication equipment, optical transmitters, verticalcavity surface-emitting lasers, wireless communication",

author = "Yi Liu and Wajahat Ali and Rui Chen and Nikolaos Bamiedakis and White, \{Ian H.\} and Harald Haas and Michael Crisp and Penty, \{Richard V.\}",

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doi = "10.1109/JLT.2025.3617131",

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AU - Crisp, Michael

AU - Penty, Richard V.

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AB - A 5×5 VCSEL array-based optical wireless communication multi-beam transmitter is designed and simulated. Each element of the array addresses a separate spatial attocell. A microlens-array based homogenizer achieves uniform coverage at the receiver plane from each multi-mode VCSEL output. 1 m2 total coverage is achieved with each attocell covering an area of 400 cm2 at a range of 3 m. For a proof-of-concept demonstration a 1×3 channel VCSEL array-based transmitter prototype is experimentally tested. The performance is verified by demonstrating three channels achieving ∼ 0.12 mW/m2 uniform power with negligible optical interference to adjacent attocells (<-14 dB). With a simple receiver design using low cost, off-the-shelf components, each channel of the transmitter achieves ∼10 Gb/s throughput using OFDM within 7 cm lateral range and > 4 Gb/s within 12 cm lateral range at 3 m. The transmitter meets eye-safety restrictions and could be scaled to 250 Gb/s aggregate data rate by employing all 25 VCSELs with independent OFDM modulation.

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A Scalable VCSEL-Array Optical Wireless Transmitter With Experimental Multi-Beam Prototype

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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